Bill against destroying the Internet industry “law of Spring” to the state Duma

Bill against destroying the Internet industry “law of Spring” to the state Duma

19.07.2016

Senator Anton Belyakov introduced to the State Duma a bill, which proposes to postpone the entry into force of the laws “anti-terrorism package” and to mitigate thereby the requirements to the operators.

photo: Gennady Cherkasov

Recall that the authors of the so-called “anti-terrorism package of Spring” are, in fact, four of the deputies of the Duma Irina Yarovaya, Alexei Pushkov, Nadezhda Gerasimova, a member of the Federation Council Viktor Ozerov.

The first of the two laws “package” depends on the tightening of criminal liability as for terrorism and riots, and for children from the age of 14. He also introduces liability for failure to inform, complicates the missionary activities, etc. the Second law on the need for Telecom operators to store all data traffic exchange users within six months.

This is the norm and caused a heated discussion in the Scenarios: in particular, the same Belyakov said that it would undermine Russian communications industry, but in the end the document was adopted by super-majority vote.

In the new bill the Senator proposes to postpone the entry into force from 2018 to 2023. He explains that “only the organization of storing the content of messages will require more than 2.2 trillion rubles,” and “the result could be a sharp increase in tariffs national operators of telecommunications services for Russian consumers”.

The whites in the explanatory Memorandum recalls that “the head of the Ministry Nikolai Nikiforov predicts the possibility of a rise in price of communication services by 300 per cent”, and “lack of symmetrical requirements to foreign operators, who are now the least represented in Russia, can lead to significant strengthening their position at the expense of national players in the Russian market of communication.”

The Senator also noted that the infrastructure of information storage, such as that proposed in the law, there is no country in the world, and its creation may lead to the forced placement of such a large and strategically important order on foreign exchanges that not only reduces the possible synergistic effect on the Russian industry from the amendments, but also contrary to the instructions of the President of the Russian Federation, providing for storage using Russian equipment and Russian software.”

Finally, like the Senator, the idea of storing the encrypted traffic does not make sense, since the encryption keys are on the devices of users, not the operators or founders of various messengers.

We will remind that earlier a petition against the “anti-terrorism package” scored on the portal change.org nearly 600 thousand signatures, and the site ROI — more than 75 thousand votes (for consideration by the governmental Commission it is necessary 100 thousand).